Interview: Kingswood On MFTV, Sydney 2012

Fergus Linacre (vocals) and Alex Laska (guitar) from Melbourne band Kingswood stopped to chat with MusicFeedsTV prior to their live set at the Lansdown Hotel. The band are on a high after getting news that they will be opening the mainstage at this year’s Splendour in the Grass Festival on Friday, 27th July. The band won the spot after entering in the triple j Unearthed Splendour in the Grass competition. Kingswood were very surprised that their music gained the support that it has, saying:

“We didn’t think they were going to play our song. Our first song, ‘Yeh Go Die’, doesn’t have a chorus, which doesn’t help with radio often. Usually you need a chorus. They supported a non-conventional song and then hence that sort of put it, made it on triple j radio as well, which is just incredible.”

According to Alex, the track was inspired by a “lovely young lady” and the meaning of the song is often misinterpreted, adding that he doesn’t wish death on anyone. Rather, the song’s point is to show an eruption of energy, to summarise a strong emotion in a very explosive way. The band is enjoying getting a response from audiences and believe that this interaction is a large component of their performance.

“When you’re giving that much energy to a collection of people and they’re doing the same in response, and it becomes like this self-feeding thing, that it’s like this monster that you can’t control, you can understand why people smash instruments. It’s not a destructive thing at all, it’s like so much kinetic energy in your body and like that rush of adrenaline.”

The band’s energy has actually led some listeners to confuse their releases for music by renowned American rock band Queens of the Stoneage. Kingswood love hearing such feedback and clearly state the band as a major musical inspiration, but they take offence to comments saying they have ripped off their music.

“It’s one of those things where you love something so much that you don’t intend to sound like something, but it happens because you would have mannerisms of your dad because you’ve grown up around him. If you can tell me the parts if you think we’ve ripped them off then I’ll happily accept that…it’s taking the energies we love and adapting them and putting our own spin on things and that’s how you develop.”

Now together as a band for five years, the road to this point has been slow but steady. An early EP by the band has never been released as they didn’t feel it was representative of their music now. Although proud of the EP at the time, the band’s manager Dave Powell (responsible for taking Jet to worldwide stardom) became sick and out of respect to their relationship, Kingswood put everything on hold.

“By the time we were ready to go again, we’d written new songs, and a few of the songs on that EP we’ve re-written. Like we’d had this relationship with Dave Powell our manager who had taken us under his wing from a very early stage. For a period of two years like, he was literally out of action, he was in a coma for three of those months. We felt like we owed it to him to be loyal cause fuck it man, like what else is there to do in life?”

Things are now finally kicking up a gear for the band with a massive schedule of live performances in the next few months.